Lockheed's $13 Million Deal Called 'Slap In Face'

About 200 Ex-workers At The Company's Cape Canaveral Unit Could Benefit. But Some Say The Settlement Is Inadequate.

November 23, 1996|By Richard Burnett of The Sentinel Staff

At least 200 former employees at Lockheed Martin's Cape Canaveral space launch unit could receive thousands of dollars from a federal age discrimination case settled this week, company officials said Friday.

Some may also land new jobs that Lockheed said it would fill from among 3,500 workers who were laid off in Central Florida, Colorado and California by its astronautics division in the early 1990s.

But critics of the deal between Lockheed and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission said the deal is full of holes.

''These people have lost much more than this settlement provides,'' said Kathy Ventrell-Monsees, managing attorney for the legal section of the American Association of Retired Persons. ''They'll be hurting for a long, long time.''

Lockheed agreed to pay $13 million to settle a 2 1/2 -year-old suit in which the EEOC claimed the company targeted nonunion workers 40 and older in work-force reductions from 1990 through 1994. The company admitted no wrongdoing and settled the suit to avoid further legal expenses, Lockheed officials said.

The amount each former worker receives varies depending on when he or she was laid off, salary at the time, and age, the EEOC said. Agency officials estimated the average settlement payment would be $6,500.

But most Lockheed employees affected by the alleged age discrimination earned an average of $55,000 annually, Ventrell-Monsees said. The settlement payment would pay them less than two months' salary.

Other analysts also said the settlement payoff was light for an aerospace conglomerate such as Lockheed, which posts annual sales of $30 billion.

''This is pocket change for them,'' said Barry Render, a professor of business management at Rollins College in Winter Park. ''If that is all it took to get them off the hook, then it is nothing. They won't miss it at all.''

Meanwhile, terms of the settlement call for Lockheed to hire an accounting firm to contact all former workers eligible for payments.

That will be no small task because many of them are scattered across the country now, either retired, unemployed or working jobs from sales to house-cleaning.

Former Lockheed-Cape Canaveral worker Tom Duncan for example, now lives in Memphis, Tenn., and works as communications coordinator for Ducks Unlimited, a nonprofit conservation group. A technical writer and public-relations worker at the time, he was laid off by Lockheed in 1993 at the age of 44.

''Everyone had the suspicion that age was a big factor in the layoffs, but there was nothing you could ever put your finger on to prove it,'' he said. ''I wouldn't go back. My job now isn't subject to the whims of Congress and corporate executives who are only concerned with next quarter's bottom line.''

Lockheed's settlement came too late for J.B. ''Mickey'' Anderson, a former department director in Denver, who died in August. Anderson's widow, DeeDee, a former teacher and counselor, said she is still angry at the situation.

''Honestly, I feel it is a slap in the face to all the workers,'' she said. ''It is a joke of a settlement.''

She said former workers in Denver are organizing a protest for the first of the year.

About 3,100 of the former employees eligible for settlement cash worked in Denver, where Lockheed manufactures the Titan and Delta rockets, said Lockheed spokesman Evan McCollum.

More than half of the 400 remaining workers were based at Cape Canaveral and the rest at Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif., where the company launches commercial and military payloads on the rockets, McCollum said.

All of the former employees will be considered for the new job openings, but the only jobs available are in Denver, he said.